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Story From My Friend's Great-Uncle (Parallel Worlds In Wartime Bombing)

tamyu

Gone But Not Forgotten
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I was talking to a friend, and she told me her great uncle had a really strange story from during the war. I guess his wife passed away while he was away during the war, so when he came back he married his brother's wife (his brother also passed in the war) to give his children a mother and her children a father... So he is kind of like a combination great uncle and grandfather.

I asked him about it, and here is the story pretty much as I remember it. I will call him H.

H enlisted in the army along with a bunch of his friends from their small town. There wasn't enough work to go around, and the army was supposed to pay well. They were all younger sons, so it seemed like a good idea. When he first went off, he was sent to be stationed in China. They didn't see any fighting - they were all together in one unit that was stationed well inside their lines, far away from the fighting. It was pretty deep in the woods, so they were fairly isolated. The thinking was that if the enemy was going to try to sneak behind their lines, they would do it by creeping through those kinds of places. They were basically just a lookout post in the middle of nowhere.

One night, it was H's turn to be up in one of the watch towers. There were four of them around the edges of the post, just out of view of the barracks in the middle. In the middle of the night, they were bombed. He spotted the planes and sounded the alarm. After the planes were out of view, he climbed down and went to check the damage and safety of those back in the barracks. He could see the light of flames in that direction and even though he wasn't supposed to leave the tower unless they called for him, he was worried about the guys he had grown up with.
It looked like they were worried about him too - they were already waiting at the edge of the tower clearing. They were very seriously talking to each other, and one of them was visibly upset... He could hear that they were really upset about one of the guys being hit directly. H knew it was bad. Scared to hear who it was, he called out to them. They turned around and raised a hand to wave to him, then stopped. They all stared in H's direction with utter horror on their faces.

Something was behind H, and it was not good by their looks. In a panic, H turned around to see his tower completely destroyed and in flames. It hadn't been just moments before when he climbed down from it. He turned back to ask them what was going on, he hadn't heard another bomb, but if they were continuing they needed to take cover now.

They were gone, already running down the path. H turned back one more time to look at his tower - and it was fine. No flames, not falling down, just the same as he had left it. Spooked, he ran to the barracks.

The building his friends had been in had taken a direct hit, one of the first bombs to come down. They had all been killed pretty much instantly. It was a wooden building, not designed to protect as much as it was to house people.

He told me that he doesn't believe in ghosts because his friends were most definitely real. His friends had looked at *him* as if they saw a ghost, and he had seen his own tower completely destroyed. He had overheard them distressed about how to handle the body, and upset that they would have to send word home... Wherever they were, he had been the one to take the hit. They were still very much alive.

He had nightmares for weeks afterward following them having his funeral, telling his family, etc. He said he often had a feeling of being in the wrong place - and was sure that some little bit of him was mixed up in worlds... And in another, his wife was still alive, as was his brother. He said it brought him comfort to know this.

Ghosts, according to him, are just glimpses into a different world where they were still alive. He had been the ghost in his friends' world.
 
That's a really interesting IHTM - thanks for sharing it ...
 
Fascinating story tamyu, it does sound like some sort of parallel worlds type of event.
 
Nice one. I enjoyed that tale.

I some times entertain the notion that we are plodding along on various (possibly infinite) planes that should we pop our clogs on one, allow us to immediately continue on the next. For example, that time a person had a close shave driving on the motorway they actually snuffed it and in the same instant the next plane took over.... or something like that. i don't claim to be the originator of such an idea but it does itch around my noggin from time to time... perhaps this tale has elements of such a set of outcomes?
 
What a great story. :D
 
What a trip! BTW, was H in the Imperial Japanese Army? Not that it directly parallels with your story, but I used to bug my grandmother for ghost stories from her childhood whenever she would visit from Japan and among some of the personal experiences she recounted was one of her brother's death in a "work camp", following his capture in Siberia. Apparently, she awoke to see him at the foot of her "bed" (floor? she was on futon of course haha), mouthing words to her which she could not hear. She got word later that he had been killed in an accient felling timber. In keeping with H's theory that there are no ghosts, only instances where we pass through different realms, maybe he was trapped "between worlds" and recognized it just long enough to attempt a goodbye.
 
Very interesting story. I've thought for some time that if there is a Type 3 multiverse, could boundaries be porous, or can consciousness be transposed at crucial or stressful moments? H may have 'stepped through' from one expression to another, which would account for his feeling of being in the wrong place. Or as probability collapsed at a violent and terminal moment, H momentarily glimpsed the alternative outcome, 'real' somewhere but not to us.

It would be interesting if H has ever come across some part of history or some aspect of culture, no matter how minor, which he feels is wrong or different to what he knew prior to the bombing (the native language of the UK is Welch, there was no October revolution, he'd never heard of Jazz...).
 
Timble2 said:
Fascinating story tamyu, it does sound like some sort of parallel worlds type of event.

I was thinking that too, like the two versions of events met, and then separated again, with both the group and the solo man moving back into a dimension where the other was killed.
 
ghostkissedivory said:
What a trip! BTW, was H in the Imperial Japanese Army?

Indeed he was. He was stationed in China and I think he eventually saw combat against the Russians, but I am kind of sketchy on any details.

Japan is pretty open to the supernatural. Really, the Shinto religion is pretty much founded on supernatural concepts rather than what is typically considered religious. Ghosts and spirits are completely accepted.

special_farces said:
It would be interesting if H has ever come across some part of history or some aspect of culture, no matter how minor, which he feels is wrong or different to what he knew prior to the bombing (the native language of the UK is Welch, there was no October revolution, he'd never heard of Jazz...).

I didn't get the feeling that he thought he was currently in the wrong world, but that there were other times afterward when he felt like he was in the wrong place. Just a fleeting feeling and not an obvious event like that one.

He said that at first he wished he hadn't turned around and had managed to stay with his friends so they would all have been alive, but after all these years and having more children after the war, he was just happy to think they were alive in some other place.

He was absolutely adamant that there was nothing ghostly about them at all, and that they were very much alive when he saw them. He said he thought about it later and figured that they weren't on their way to see him, but we're distressed after they had found him dead... It apparently brought him comfort that they were clearly mourning him just like he mourned them.
 
'In Ghostly Japan' by Lafcadio Hearn is available on Project Gutenberg for anyone who may wish to find out a bit more. :D
 
Japan is pretty open to the supernatural. Really, the Shinto religion is pretty much founded on supernatural concepts rather than what is typically considered religious. Ghosts and spirits are completely accepted.

Right, it's fascinating ... I grew up around Shinto (and Buddhist) practices when with family in Japan - not fully understanding or appreciating it, just accepting it as tradition - but it wasn't until recently that my desire to learn more about the culture developed, particularly regarding Shinto as its indigenous "belief system".

I spent the first week in May visiting family there and was speaking with my uncle who was inquiring whether or not I was religious, probably due to my mother's (his sister) recent conversion to Christianity. When I asked him in return, his response was that he is atheist and only observes the Buddhist rites as a matter of tradition. When I asked him about Shinto, he replied that it's different because it "just is". This makes a sort of intrinsic sense to me, as a way of interpreting the world and portraying human nature as it "just is" and interfacing with the conditions of this reality with a full acceptance of the supernatural aspect of all things. Just my opinion - that's it, didn't mean to highjack the thread. Always enjoy reading your stories, tamyu, and not just for the cultural / geographic context.
 
Anyone hear that ghost? arnt you suppose to go bump in the night?
 
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